Sword Born

TWENTY-NINE

From beside me in bed, Del spoke quietly into the darkness. "You’re awake."

"So are you."

"But I was asleep. I don’t think you’ve slept since we came to bed."

"Long night."

"Full night," she emphasized dryly. Then, "Is this what you dreamed of?"

From my back, I stared hard at the ceiling I could not see. "I dreamed of no such thing in the hyorts, or even when I slept beneath the stars after a beating."

"A sandtiger," she said softly. "And freedom."

"Never beyond that. Never beyond the moment of freedom, when I could walk away and know myself able to make my own choices about my life."

"And now?"

"Now I’m no more free… no, it’s not the same and I don’t mean it to be, but she said something, something about responsibility, and the acceptance of it marking adulthood."

For a moment Del was silent. Then, softly, "The metri is a strong woman."

"But is she right?"

"About responsibility and adulthood?" Del sighed, shifted onto her back so that we lay side by side and flat, shoulders touching. "Taken of itself, I believe she is. Children live for their freedom, for the moment their tasks are done — if they have any — so that they may make choices about their lives. Of course, those ’lives’ comprise the next few moments, little more… but the impulse is the same. To be finished, so they may be free."

When she fell silent, I prompted her. "And?"

"Adults understand that freedom must be earned, not given by someone else."

"No?"

"No. We set ourselves the tasks, we execute them, and we are free then to accept other tasks."

"What has this to do with the metri?"

"The metri decides for others what she believes are the tasks that must be completed. For the benefit of her house."

"In other words, she doesn’t permit anyone of her household — or in her family — to seek out their own tasks. And thus no one of the — Stessoi? — is truly free."

Del tilted her head toward me. "I think the metri believes no one is strong enough to hold her place unless he be as she is."

"Ruthless. Cold. Hard."

"Is she?"

"Ruthless? Yes. Hard? Absolutely. Cold?" I fell silent. Then, "I can’t say so. Because passion drives her. Her ruthlessness and hardness is framed on a passion for her household and the future of the Stessoi."

"Does Herakleio have it?"

"From the sound of it, Herakleio has enough to illuminate the island!"

"That’s lust," Del countered. "Youthful passions, yes; he has never been permitted to grow beyond them. But the passion requiring coldness and ruthlessness?"

"Not yet," I answered slowly.

"You?"

We both knew the answer to that. "You’re saying if I employed it now, she would hand me the household and the future of the Stessoi."

"She would expect you to take them."

"And Herakleio?"

Del lay very still beside me. "The first ten times you and he spar with live steel, be very careful."

"And the eleventh?"

"By the eleventh, either he will have acknowledged that you will always defeat him…"

"Or?"

"Or you will be dead."

In a matter of ten days, Herakleio had learned he had the body, the reflexes, the power, to be what I was. In a matter of moments, in the face of the metri’s announcement that I was her grandson, he had learned he needed the mind and determination as well as the body. Because he believed now the metri favored me, and the only way he might regain that favor was not to replace me, but to become me.

The implications of this conviction astonished me. Not the motivation — the metri played us all like counters on a board; not the impetus — she had moved him to precisely this position on that board. But that he understood and acknowledged what it was she wanted of the game, and that she justified her approach because she believed it required.

And it astonished me also that he accepted it instead of railing against it as a spoiled godling might.

Herakleio may not have believed in her certainty for himself. But clearly he had done more than merely exist in the metri’s household; he had learned her mind. Until now, apparently, he had never attempted to invoke and employ that knowledge. Until now, apparently, he had never felt the need.

Beyond the mechanics of technique, a sword-dancer is not required to know why an opponent moves the way he moves. Only that he does move, only when he will move, so he may anticipate and counter that move, or remove the potential for it before the idea of the move exists within the opponent’s mind.

Herakleio asked for Del. He did it with premeditation, and with a deliberate shrewdness I hadn’t anticipated. My opponent had won the initial pass; my first move was countered before it occurred to me I might need to make it.

He asked for Del not because he believed it would hurt me if he believed she was better — he was, surprisingly, less petty than he was clever — but because Del of anyone in the world knew best how to fight me. Knew best how to defeat me.

This move made him better than clever, and therefore dangerous.

I’d made the mistake of not judging Herakleio shrewd enough to see the option. I did not make the mistake of assuming he’d offer no contest if it came to a dance with the Stessa legacy on the line, nor did I make the assumption he could not win. Because on any day, in any circle, any man might win.

Or woman.

Abbu Bensir, on our first day in the training circle beneath the implacable eye of the shodo of Alimat, had made such assumptions about a boy with fewer than twenty years to his twenty-five; with weeks at Alimat when Abbu boasted years; with a wooden blade in a hand that had not yet wielded steel.

Abbu Bensir had lost that dance and nearly his life.

While I, in disbelief as the man lay choking from a partially crushed throat, asked what manner of magic had stood in my place, because surely there was no other way I might have defeated Abbu.

The shodo, an immensely patient and practical man, had upon the instant lost all patience and told me in no uncertain terms the only magic any man needed was that of his mind and heart; that no other existed, lest he weaken that mind and heart by setting crutches beneath them.

From that day forward the only magic in my life had been pure skill, determination, and the technique to employ both using the context I understood: I was born to and of the sword, and no other power would ever control me beyond my ability to use the sword.

I didn’t believe Herakleio could defeat me. But neither had Abbu believed I could defeat him.

And so I won the second pass, because I accepted as truth what another might, in disbelief, name falsehood. I would not be defeated by an accident of misassumption, but by carefully constructed design, correct execution — and luck.

Technique, timing, talent. Two could be taught, refined. One could only be born. But talent without focus, without determination, without obsessive need, is wild, unchanneled, and therefore diluted. Easier to be defeated. Easier to succumb to the ravages of emotion, of excess passion, instead of controlling and using the power that could fuel technique and timing.

Del, who had more insight about people than anyone I knew, was training Herakleio. Del, who had an even greater insight into the workings of my technique, timing, and talent, was teaching Herakleio how to comprehend and counter all three.

And unlike anyone else, he had the physical tools to do it.

Unlike anyone else save Del. Who had done it once in a circle on Staal-Ysta, even as I had done it to her in the self-same circle.

We were a long time removed from that circle and the circumstances that put us into it. But the bones remembered. The flesh recalled. The mind retreated from the brutal honesty of that dance, because in its unyielding purity it had nearly killed us both.

And each day, as Herakleio learned from Del, he also learned from me. It was a task set before me by the woman who was, she said, my grandmother; who wanted to put into her place the man best suited to it; who believed the acceptance and execution of the task marked a boy’s passage into manhood. Herakleio and I, nearly two decades apart in age, were nonetheless children in the eyes of the woman who was agelessness incarnate. And in the completion of the task, we each of us would have embraced her convictions if for differing reasons: Herakleio to prove he was worthy of her place; and me to prove he was worthy of her place.

It wasn’t me she wanted. It wasn’t me she needed. Herakleio was and always would be both. And therefore Del taught him, and therefore I taught him, so that on the day we met in the circle it would be a proper dance according to the honor codes that lived in our own souls.

I knew of men who would swear I was mad to teach my opponent. But if I didn’t, if I merely watched him learn, I learned his abilities without offering him the same opportunity in return. That was dishonest. If I taught him with intent to sabotage his efforts, that was dishonest. Because I was already better. And the shodo had taught me to be honest in all things to do with the dance.

I knew of men who would blister Del with oaths and suggest she depart at once. But I didn’t do either, because that, too, was dishonest. Del made her own decisions. Her honor was unassailable; it was one of the things I most admired and respected about her. And my honor — as elaii-ali-ma, as borjuni, as a Southron ikepra — was nonexistent.

In the circle, the sword-dancer with the mind that sees and creates potentials, that manufactures opportunity, is the one who wins. Anyone may kill another by stealth, by deception. But only one who invokes the honesty of the circle may call himself a sword-dancer. Because it was the circle and its inherent codes that bound our souls. No one who stepped inside could deny that, because the circle was the arbiter of our survival.

The dance Herakleio and I undertook would be honest in the extreme, because though I had the advantage of years of training and experience, he had the advantage of a peculiarly dangerous truth.

If Herakleio won, he won. If Herakleio lost, he won.

If I lost, I died.

Because I wouldn’t kill Herakleio, but I believed he would kill me. And so my next move was obvious.

I stood up from the terrace wall and asked Del to halt their current exercise. It was afternoon, we were slick with sweat. Del had bound her hair back into its habitual braid, and Herakleio had tied a length of leather around his brow so wind-blown locks would not obscure his vision.

I nodded at Del, smiling, and offered a blade to Herakleio. A steel blade.

Once he’d have shut his hand on the hilt immediately. Now he waited. "Why?" he asked warily.

I hitched a shoulder lazily. "Only so much you can learn with wood. After a while you get complacent. Bruises sting, but they don’t kill."

He nodded his head at Del. "Then she will show me."

I shoved the pommel of the sword into his flat belly. "Take it, boy."

It stung, as I meant it to. Color stained his face. Anger brightened his eyes as he took it as I intended: with simmering contempt. "So, you will skulk around for table scraps and wait for the metri to die no matter how long it takes."

I shrugged again. "Not like I’m a total stranger. I am her grandson."

"Herakleio," Del said sharply. "Be aware of what he’s doing."

I shot her a glance that told her to back off. Del scowled back, telling me she refused. Herakleio, for his part, stared at me angrily, then shut his hand around the hilt. He settled the matter for us by turning to set the blade onto the tile in the center of the terrace.

"Stop it," Del hissed at me. "This is too soon."

"He can stop it if he wants."

"You’re making it impossible!"

"All it requires is a little self-control." I saluted her with my blade. "Care to step out of the way?"

"Tiger —"

"Go," Herakleio told her. Then, belatedly, "Please?"

It was the first polite word I’d heard out of the boy. Del was no more happy for his request than she was with my suggestion, but she got out of the way.

Herakleio stood a pace from the sword he’d set upon the tile. "Well?"

I stepped to his blade, then on it. And set the tip of mine against his throat. "First mistake," I said. "You assumed this was a dance."

He lifted his chin, stretching flesh away from the steel. I let the tip drift idly up to follow. "This is how it begins," he declared. "I watched you and the woman!"

"That was a dance," I told him. "This is not. This is a lesson."

"Lesson —" he began furiously.

I hooked a foot beneath his sword, scooped it upward, caught and deflected it directly at Herakleio. He was quick enough to catch it, but in the doing of it he incurred a scratched throat from my blade. Blood trickled in a thin ribbon of crimson.

I smiled, stepped away a single pace. "Now," I said gently, and set to with my sword.

It took very little time. Very little effort. He had a firm enough grasp not to lose the sword at once, but there was no grace in his movements, no technique in answer to mine, merely desperate self-preservation. I chased him across the terrace, against the wall, over the wall and a good ten paces beyond before I finally took pity on him and ended it with a trap that broke his guard, caught the sword, snatched it out of his hands. I stood there before the panting young man with a hilt in each of my hands, both tips coyly resting on his shoulders. On either side of his neck.

"Lesson," I said. "Two swords are better than one. And if you can’t keep yours, be certain the other man will take it."

Without waiting for his response I lifted the blades from his shoulders and turned to go; stopped briefly as I saw the woman on the terrace but a pace or two away. I heard Herakleio’s hiss of humiliation; he knew she had seen the ease of his defeat.

I met the woman’s eyes steadily. "Your move, metri."

She understood. She knew now that I knew. And it altered the strategy.

"Go," she bade me. "Herakleio and I have something to discuss."

I’ll just bet they did. I raised eyebrows at Del, who turned and preceded me into the house as the metri and her kinsman discussed the repercussions of abject defeat.